


(if we are not spies)

by andibeth82



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Identity Issues, Natasha Feels, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Red Room
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-14
Updated: 2014-05-14
Packaged: 2018-01-24 17:53:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1614011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andibeth82/pseuds/andibeth82
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When he finally approaches her, it’s at a bar in Volgograd. She’s got her knees up against the counter; her newly dyed blonde hair pulled into a low ponytail and concealed by a hooded leather jacket that also hides most of her face. He figures he would’ve almost missed her this time around if he hadn’t seen her enter a few hours earlier, or noticed the way one finger moves around the glass of what he assumes has to be tequila, because she doesn’t drink anything else when she’s alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	(if we are not spies)

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to [intrikate88](http://intrikate88.tumblr.com) for helping with context, unintentionally providing me title and music inspiration, and instructing me in the ways of Russian history. Oh, and for feeding me all the lines that helped make this infinitely better. To [enigma731](http://archiveofourown.org/users/enigma731) for beta and the comments that made this readable. And to [bobsessive](bobsessive.tumblr.com) for being my constant cheerleader always and pushing me to finish this.
> 
>  
> 
> I’ll take off my armor  
> You drop your crown of thorns  
> I’ll empty out the cartridge  
> You put down your sword  
> Baby, are you willing to suspend your disbelief  
> Will you start over with me?  
> \- Ann Vriend, "Start Over"

**Clint Barton**

_“I can see you trying to look past your reflection / I have named you guilty never to run free / One too many arrows left us both bleeding.”_

 

The first place he tracks her to is Oslo, at a café in Aker Brygee by the water, cobblestoned streets and a steaming cappuccino and clothing that looks as though it’s seen better days. It’s her hair that he fixates on, mousey brown with slight curls at the ends, and she’s lighting up a cigarette that he’s watched her bum off a passerby just moments before, blowing smoke into the stagnant summer air as she peruses a thick pamphlet.

_Saw you on Capitol Hill._

He sends the text and continues to observe her from the top of the roof across the street, from a vantage point that he’s managed to procure after scaling up the back wall of an alley with relative ease, given the afternoon crowds. He sees her pull the smartphone from the space by her hip, her head dipping slightly, and waits out the minutes before her response with more trepidation than he wants to admit.

_Thought you might’ve. How was it?_

He looks down at his own phone and then leans back on his elbows, his eyes still trained on her form, shielding his face against the afternoon sun.

_Fine. I’m not surprised. You’re a good public speaker._

_I’ve had lots of practice bullshitting._

_You and me both._

He sees her react, though he’s too far away to make out any kind of an acute facial expression. It’s enough for him to get a read, though; enough for him to know that there’s still something there even if she’s trying so desperately hard to prove otherwise. He flicks off the phone, sitting up, and continues to watch until the sun goes down, until she finally moves, leaving a large collection of bills on the table but no other evidence of existence in her wake.

 

______________________

 

In Paris, she’s traded brown for black, and the color sticks out like a careless spill of ink, a dark stain against otherwise pale skin. Here, she’s Laura Moureax, or at least that’s what he overhears her tell the man who’s selling newspapers on the street corner. She sits on a bench across from the Arc de Triomphe, seemingly oblivious to those around her.

_How’s the weather?_

This time, his hiding spot is in plain sight, his eyes concealed by a pair of dark glasses as his body finds purchase against the window of a storefront. He’s just out of view of where he knows her peripheral vision stretches, close enough to see (because his eyes could pick her out a mile away if he had to) yet far enough away that he knows she won’t suspect his surveillance.

_Cold. But fine. What about you?_

Clint looks up, letting his eyes dart back and forth before texting back, and leaving the phone face up as his fingers palm at the keys.

_Cold. But I’m always cold now, it seems._

The shoulders inside her jacket hunch, the curve of her body going rigid as she looks down, sees the words that he knows are being transmitted. He leans forward after a beat, keeping his head low, moving down the crowded sidewalk until he’s closer to where she’s positioned. From here, he can see the way she holds herself more easily - tall and collected and a little bit demure, more Natalie Rushman than Natasha Romanov, he notes with a hint of irony. He waits until she moves, her dark hair and drab clothing blending with the rest of the afternoon crowds, and he only starts to follow when she’s put enough distance between them that they can both slip comfortably into invisibility.

 

______________________

 

When he finally approaches her, it’s at a bar in Volgograd. She’s got her knees up against the counter; her newly dyed blonde hair pulled into a low ponytail and concealed by a hooded leather jacket that also hides most of her face. He figures he would’ve almost missed her this time around if he hadn’t seen her enter a few hours earlier, or noticed the way one finger moves around the glass of what he assumes has to be tequila, because she doesn’t drink anything else when she’s alone.

He slips quietly inside, picking a table in the corner that’s sufficiently encased in the shadows before fishing the small phone out of his pocket, fingerless gloved digits moving briskly against the screen.

_Where are you?_

He sees her start as the phone buzzes in her jacket, one hand moving cautiously to retrieve it, and watches as she ducks her head while her fingers work furiously.

_Nowhere you want to know._

He purses his lips into a straight line, swiping his hand across the screen again.

_You’re wrong about me. I do want to know._

She looks down once more as the phone lights up and then drops it into her glass with a quick bend of her wrist, before leaning over and ordering another drink. The action causes him to sigh, to rub a hand across his face, the inside of his palm meeting six months worth of an overgrown beard with hints of gray that he doesn’t remember acquiring. He tucks his coat around his body as he rises, one hand secure on the hilt of the knife hidden in his pocket.

“Kiev. London. Russia.” Clint throws a collection of passports onto the bar table and raises an eyebrow. “You’re a hard woman to find, Natasha.”

She flinches at the sound of her name, a barely there jerk of a reaction as her fingers twitch against the shot glass. “I told you where to find me,” she says, her voice low, as he sinks into the open seat next to her. “Left you a voicemail before it all went to shit.”

It’s a careful lie, he realizes – it’s the best kind, her favorite kind, the kind she’s so good at because she’s spent years enveloping herself in it. It’s Natasha at her greatest, only this time, it’s him on the other end of her trickery instead of a mark she’s been sent to kill.

“Phone – dead,” Clint says, nodding to her glass and tossing his own onto the table. “Records, wiped – funny how that happens, when an entire database of someone’s identity goes out to the world and the next thing you know, that particular someone disappears without a trace.”

Natasha says nothing, her face impassively neutral. “You’ve been tracking me since Oslo,” she says finally, as though it’s an acceptable answer to his accusations. “Why?”

“Why are you running?” he counters, raising an eyebrow. Natasha remains silent, but he doesn’t miss the way her left hand moves over her lap.

“Did you come to rescue me?” she asks, tilting her head, strands of blonde glinting in the dim light. “Did you come to convince me that there’s some magical fix for all of this?”

“You know that there’s no fix,” Clint answers, his own fingers scraping the stem of his knife. Natasha laughs, a scathing and bitter reaction.

“You can’t rescue me, Barton,” she says dully, and her eyes look as dead as her voice sounds. “You can’t rescue me because I don’t fucking exist. Funny how that happens.”

He’s so busy watching the way she looks at her drink that he very nearly misses the way her other hand palms the blade hidden inside her belt, until he feels the brush of steel flat against his thigh, its coldness cutting through the fabric of his pants.

“Don’t even think about it,” Clint says quietly, placing his own knife against her hip in swift retaliation. He finds her eyes, silently battling until she concedes, letting the weapon slide harmlessly down his skin with a smile he can only describe as spiteful.

“Okay,” she says evenly, placing the knife between them, a gleaming metal divider that Clint recognizes as territorial. “I just wanted to see what you would do.”

He finds the breath he realizes he’s been holding as he returns his own knife to his pocket, one elbow snaking forward to cover her exposed blade from view.

“Come with me,” he says quietly. “Let me help you.”

“I’m beyond help,” she replies, downing the rest of her shot. “By the way, I fucking hate that beard.”

“I fucking hate that hair,” Clint returns, causing Natasha to laugh again.

“At least you know who you are.”

He groans, rubbing a hand across his eye. “Christ, Natasha. I don’t want to do this in a fucking dive bar. Will you please just come with me? Because I hate to break it to you, but you’re getting out of here one way or another and I don’t want to force you against your will.”

She levels her gaze at that, raising an eyebrow, and he can see the way the words shake her underneath a shell of resistance, the way she tries to brush them off as if they haven’t affected her at all. “Are you gonna cuff me, too?”

“I’m not taking you hostage,” he replies warily, moving off the chair. “I’m helping you because I care about you. You cared about me, once, if you can remember.”

“And look how well that worked out,” she replies sarcastically, folding her arms as she meets his height. Clint sighs and lowers his voice until it’s barely audible above the soft overhead radio and mumbling conversations of the establishment’s few other patrons.

“You’ve been wearing the same clothes,” he starts. “The ones that you took from your home in D.C.”

Natasha tenses, and it’s just the slightest hint of a reaction, but he can tell she’s struggling not to break her facade. “So?” she asks carefully, challenging his gaze. Clint shrugs.

“You never stay in one place longer than two days. You’ve changed your hair everywhere you go, and you’re paying for things in cash which means you’ve cleaned out your bank accounts and are using everything in your name to get by.” He watches her face as he talks, the muscles in her cheek twitching slightly beneath an otherwise stony expression.

“You’re paranoid about every interaction and every exchange, which is why you never tell people where you’re from,” he continues. “And you just told the entire world every single thing you fought to keep private. You’re a fucking mess, Natasha. I know how it is.”

“You don’t,” she snarls and in that instant he sees it, the unravel, the switch that flips towards a sudden lack of control. “You think you do, because of what you went through, but you don’t. You lost your mind for three days, Clint. You didn’t lose thirty years of your life.”

“I lost my privacy, too,” he argues, frustration boiling over as he tries to keep his voice level. “I lost the fact that people thought that I was a decent person, because I was brainwashed by a god and because I killed my co-workers and I made a lot of fucking mistakes in my career and all of them, every single one of them is out there for the world to see, just like yours. Except I’ve never had a cover to hide behind.” He pauses and puts his hands forward, calloused palms dry and cracked from days on the road, blisters and blood dotting the edges of his skin as if the scars will be enough to convince her that he needs to heal as much as she does. “Let me help you.”

“I don’t want help,” she says again, after enough silence has passed, but she gives in anyway like he knows she will, small fingers just barely entwined in his offered grasp.

 

______________________

 

Clint ushers her out of the bar with one arm tight around her shoulders but she doesn’t return the sentiment, the limpness of her body a display of the same detachment he’s observed from her days on the road, except when she needed to be on guard because some places were more publicly visible than others.

“Get in,” he says, shoving her unceremoniously towards the car, and she lets out a sigh as she slides into the passenger seat.

“Have you figured out how we’re going to get out of Russia, Barton? Because I tore up all my documents when I got here, and you left the rest of them sitting in the trash back at the bar.” She punctuates the words with a smug grin, almost as if she’s proud of the fact that he’s managed to miss this critical piece of information, like if there’s anything Natasha Romanov can do it’s one up him on things she’s been doing her entire life.

“How did you get in?” Clint asks instead. Natasha falls suddenly silent, twirling a strand of loose blonde around her fingers, and he sets his mouth in a hard line as he turns the wheel.

“I’ve learned a few things,” he says finally, keeping his eyes on the road. “And we’re not leaving Russia. Not yet.”

Natasha’s head snaps up, her eyes narrowing as she finds her voice. “What do you mean, _not yet_?”

“I mean, not yet,” he replies, keeping his voice as calm as he dares. “We’ll leave when it’s time. Which, I’m sorry to say, is not now.”

She’s been slouched in the seat next to him, guarded and careful not to give too much away in her body language but now she sits up slowly, her muscles tight as her voice takes on a pitch that matches her change in expression.

“Stop the car.”

Clint looks over and obeys, pulling off the road and onto the shoulder, killing the engine before leaning back against the seat. He half expects to see a knife again and while he wouldn’t be surprised if she decided to kill both of them at this moment, he also knows that whatever disregard she has for her own life might be spared by the fact that she doesn’t want to disregard his – at least, not yet.

“What do you want?” Clint asks quietly, watching the way she remains still and unmoving, like a bomb on the edge of explosion.

“I want out of this car.”

“Not an option,” he replies instantly, and in the seconds it’s taken her to move her body his mind has already anticipated and calculated at least ten different ways to combat her attack. She doesn’t go for her weapons, however, instead lunging over him and reaching for the door as her body stretches across the length of his lap.

He watches as she pulls desperately at the tight handles, her fingers scrabbling across the interior for any kind of switch or release that might allow her freedom, before Clint uses his own strength to push her back. It’s years of learned muscle against natural agility as he slams into her body, shoving her against the passenger seat with surprising force, because there’s a reason they leave their sparring sessions bruised and battered and medicated when they’re not even trying.

“The last of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s Level 10 driver controlled vehicles,” he says after he gets his breath back. “Programmed to my commands only. Is that a problem?”

He watches her face, the way her shoulders rise and drop, the way her throat constricts and releases over the small silver arrow that rests at the curve of her collarbone - the one that, he notes as he swallows down a rock, is the one thing about her that hasn’t changed throughout her travels.

“This is not up to you,” she bites out roughly. “This is not your fight.”

“This is my fight in every way that it is yours,” Clint refutes, starting the car again. He sees the flicker in her eyes, the touch of anxiety that presses in around her pupils, but chooses to ignore it as he maneuvers the car back onto the road. Natasha turns her head towards the window so that he can’t see her face, and it’s a different sort of mask than the one that he’s used to seeing her put on when she’s forced to hide her emotions in plain sight.

“Just drive, Barton,” she says finally, her voice suddenly sounding a thousand years old. “Drive and get me the hell out of here.”

 

**Natasha Romanov**

_“I remember when you had the truest eyes / In my mess of mazes you were my best surprise / Long before I started wearing a disguise”_

 

 

This is what Natasha Romanov dreams about: she dreams about putting a bullet in his brain in Venice and two more in his stomach, her gun discharging over and over because that was her mission and that was her job, a name on a file she didn’t question and an order that she trusted needed to be done.

This is what Natasha Romanov dreams about: she dreams about doing the same thing in Bulgaria and then again in Seoul, where she watches him sleep and grabs one of the arrows from his quiver moments before he wakes. She puts it through his throat and drives it deep into flesh and bone, twists it up so that when the blood spills from his mouth and his neck it looks like he was never anything but a nameless target.

This is what Natasha Romanov dreams about: she dreams of killing because it is her duty to kill and it is her duty to obey, because Natasha Romanov is a weapon, and if she doesn’t know anything else about herself, she will always know that.

 

______________________

 

She’s unaware that she’s fallen asleep, which makes the jolt back to consciousness that much more disorienting, her legs tangling out from underneath her as she feels her way around a bed she doesn’t remember being put into, touches skin that she doesn’t remember being mostly bare, and recognizes a stillness that signifies she’s no longer in a moving vehicle. It takes another ten seconds for her brain to snap into awareness as she bolts upwards, her hands clenching into fists, two legs swinging forward so she can move into a defensive stance.

“I didn’t drug you, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Clint says quietly from somewhere behind her. She turns a little sluggishly, finding him hunched in a chair a seemingly safe distance from where she’s been sprawled along the slightly sagging mattress, a white mug clutched between his fingers. In however long it’s been since she’s passed out, he’s changed into loose fitting jeans and a dark tee shirt.

“Then why do I feel like shit?” she challenges, shaking the roughness from her voice. He shrugs.

“Maybe it’s the first time you’ve allowed yourself to sleep for more than five minutes,” he returns tonelessly. She narrows her eyes, her senses sharpening to take in the unfamiliarity of the location and full comprehension of the fact that she’s been stripped to her underwear and bra. Natasha does a quick inventory of her body, noting with increased paranoia the absence of everything from her shirt to her socks, including the weapons she’s been keeping concealed in her belt and in her boots.

“Where are they?”

Clint shakes his head, as if that’s enough of a response to satisfy her. “I don’t need my arrows here.”

“No. Where are my _weapons_?” she clarifies more severely, moving towards him as he folds his arms.

“You don’t need them here, either. But they’re safe. It’s all safe, Natasha. You really think I’d be careless enough to leave my bow somewhere that I didn’t trust?” He pauses. “This isn’t about weapons. This about you and me.”

“I told you, this is _not_ about anything,” she snaps, resisting the urge to scream. “This is about you taking me to some strange place and pretending that you can _fix_ me when you have no idea what you’re dealing with.” She holds his gaze as if challenging him to fight, to retaliate, to give her something to refute. Instead, he throws her a blanket that she lets fall limply at her feet.

“I thought that you might recognize where you are, but maybe I was wrong,” he says, nodding towards the bed. “Anyway, I left you some clothes if you want to get dressed. I’ll be downstairs.”

He exits the room, closing the door firmly behind him, and Natasha turns to stare at the garments that she’s formerly disregarded. Her mind struggles to understand his response as she moves her hand over the shirt – _her_ shirt, she realizes upon further inspection, her long sleeved green shirt that she was so fond of wearing when he would visit D.C. and their nights would consist of terrible take-out and even more terrible movie choices. Furrowing her brow slightly, she catches sight of a well-worn pair of jeans, noting the tear on the lower leg, the one that she recognizes from the time she misjudged one of Clint’s sparring moves and ended up with an crescent scar on her calf from one of his arrowheads.

Natasha sinks to the floor and tentatively begins to sort through the bag at her feet, shaking hands unearthing piles of clothes, underwear, and socks. Most of the items are comfort related, as if he’s tried to pilfer the parts of her that she might be most susceptible to, but there are a few jackets as well and some items that seem more suitable for a mission than for lounging around on the couch. Still, it’s all there, at least 70% of her wardrobe, and she wonders at exactly what point he had made the detour to her apartment, if it was before she blew everything to shit in Pierce’s office or after she decided to leave for good.

She combs through a few more items before deciding to redress herself in a pair of loose khakis, covering the remainder of her upper body with a worn S.H.I.E.L.D. sweatshirt that she knows they both once shared, the one that still smells like a combination of her scent and his sweat. Tucking blonde inside the folds of the hood, she cautiously opens the door and makes her way slowly down the stairs.

The kitchen is straight ahead but she chooses the opposite direction, finding what she assumes has to be the living room. It hasn’t gone unnoticed to her that Clint hadn’t secured the house like he’s prone to doing, or for that matter, double-checked for security measures - unless he did so during course of the time that she wasn’t conscious. It’s a thought that makes Natasha uneasy, the realization of knowing she was willingly relinquishing control of her mind and body without consent, and she suddenly can’t stop herself from going through the motions as her hands sweep the couch and the windows for bugs and other discreet methods of surveillance. She finds the lamp by the couch and floods the room with brightness, blinking at the mostly bare bookcases and the patterned rugs and the television in the corner that looks old enough to be ancient. It’s strange, the way she knows this place, knows where everything is like the back of her hand but doesn’t at the same time, and she racks her brain trying to think of properties she’s acquired and then forgotten about over the course of her lifetime. Odessa, Budapest, Lagos…

Natasha has no safe houses in Russia, though, had gotten out before any of that and although she’s returned for a mission here or an extraction there, she’s never considered setting down a bolthole in this particular area.

“That’s ironic,” Clint says dryly, looking up at her outfit as she makes her way into the kitchen. She hugs her arms to her chest, refusing to sit down, to make herself comfortable in that way, out of the sheer apprehension of letting herself get too close to an emotional reaction that she doesn’t quite feel ready for.

“You said I should recognize this place.”

“I said you should, I didn’t say you would,” he clarifies, taking a sip of coffee. “There’s a difference, Natasha.”

She can’t help the sharp intake of breath that comes at the use of her name, a response that happens against her will. “But I don’t. I have no idea where I am, unless we’re in some safe house that I can’t remember.”

Clint shrugs. “Then you’ll remember when you need to,” he says with the same casual tone, nodding at her hands. “Coffee or tea?”

“I – tea,” she falters, looking up in confusion as Clint moves to the stove, throwing a glance in her direction.

“You could have coffee if you want,” he suggests over his shoulder. “You could have anything.”

“I don’t understand what you’re trying to tell me,” she snaps, irritated at his apparent nonchalance, the complete 360 from the harsh demeanor he had displayed at the bar and later during their drive. She grips her cup tight with two hands when he places it in front of her.

“You really don’t remember?” he asks carefully as she takes a drink, letting the too hot water burn the skin of her tongue.

“No,” she says quietly, after swallowing down fire. “I really don’t. Am I supposed to?”

Clint frowns, sitting back down in his chair. “I don’t know,” he says. “But you will.”

“You keep saying that,” Natasha replies, trying to keep her voice level. “You keep saying that like I’m supposed to just _trust_ you. But I don’t know how to do that if I don’t know where I am.”

“You did, once,” Clint reminds her. “And it was based on very little trust, if I remember correctly.”

Natasha shakes her head, the memories flooding her brain in waves, the scars that she left them both with and the pain that came before and after. “That was different,” she insists. “I was in control. I had something to prove.”

“And you don’t now?” Clint asks curiously as Natasha bites her lip, placing her mug on the table.

She gets up calmly and purposefully, making her way back to the living room, and grabs the first thing she sees – a small purple vase with a hairline crack barely visible on the underside of its surface. Natasha throws it to the ground without speaking, watching as it shatters into pieces before she moves to the bookshelf, tearing manuscripts from their resting place. One knocks into the lamp, another lands harmlessly near the couch, and a third bounces off the television. She lunges for the discarded lamp, smashing it onto the floor, glass and porcelain flying in every direction and a hot stream of blood flowing freely from an open gash on her wrist.

When there’s nothing else in the vicinity to smash or destroy, she stands in the middle of it all, a steady stream of red dripping down her hand. He’s followed, but kept that same, strange distance – as if an invisible line has been drawn between them, one that he can’t and won’t cross. He stands at the archway of the living room, his mouth a hard line of silence that says everything and nothing all at once.

“I don’t even know where I am,” she repeats helplessly, clutching her fist so that the red starts to stain the length of her hand, seeping under her fingernails, and _it’s fitting_ , she thinks, that the one constant in her life has always been the fact that she was, in some sense, destined to be red.

“I told you,” Clint says, not bothering to come closer. “You will.”

 

______________________

 

They sleep that night in separate rooms, her closing the door on solitude after he’s said his goodnights, a departure devoid of any of their usual physical or emotional sentiments that would otherwise be a staple in their relationship. At first, she thinks it’s because she might be a liability, before she realizes that it’s more likely an unspoken game of trust.

Natasha paces around the room, eyes the window in the corner that’s sealed shut – one floor up, which is barely anything, an easy escape. She’s taken enough notice of the surroundings to know that they aren’t far from the main roads, and that the woods at the edge of the property can provide a more than adequate hiding spot. And there are floorboards, too, ones that creak ever so slightly under her feet, hinting at their ability to be torn up.

It’s not impossible, and she’s not stuck here, and the thought enters her mind before she has a chance to push it away, that she can _leave_.

She doesn’t, though, simply stretches out along the bed, which is at least comfortable – certainly more so than the hard pavement of an alley, or the too firm bed of a hotel, or the few stolen moments she’s managed to procure at an unfamiliar residence during an unsuspecting family’s night out. Natasha turns carefully against the pillows, the bandage on her right hand scraping against the mattress, and reaches up to drag fingernails down the side of the bedframe in a lazy trail. The pads of her fingers dance over something etched in the wood and she pauses, letting her touch rest on a collection of what she recognizes as small Russian letters until her arm begins to shake, an unsteady tremor that extends first to her legs and then to her entire body.

Natasha bolts upright while swallowing down bile and fear, sliding out of bed and moving quietly across the floor, down the hall, towards the closed door of the room next door. She expects it to be locked but when she places her hands on the knob it opens easily, and she’s not sure if that means he trusts her more than he’s letting on or if he just carelessly forgot to protect himself in his own tiredness.

Natasha feels her way through the darkness, the blinds in the corner window drawn just enough so that the room can still cling to the shadows, despite the slight bits of outside light that dot the still form of Clint’s frame. There’s a familiarity to their bodies whenever they sleep together, mostly tangled in each other’s limbs but more often than not resting in curled up question marks with her back to his chest. Here, though, in the absence of her – of anyone, really – he’s sprawled out alone and she thinks he looks almost lost: a foreign body in a foreign home and a foreign country, swimming in too many sheets and pillows, as if he’s trying to find a way to make himself fit in a place where he doesn’t really belong.

Natasha lowers herself to the edge of the bed but says nothing, because she knows that if her instincts are correct, he’ll realize that he’s not alone and wake sooner rather than later. She takes advantage of the moment to study his face in a way she hasn’t had a chance to since he approached her at the bar, the ache in her chest spreading into her throat when she quickly calculates and realizes it’s been more than a year since she’s last been in his presence. He’s finally taken the time to shave his beard, but a healthy amount of stubble has grown back in rather quickly, and he hasn’t bothered to keep up appearances otherwise. There are lines on his face that she thinks are more prominent than before, more deeply etched into his skin than when he first left her, or perhaps it’s the fact that his facial hair has covered up most of the exhaustion that he’s seemingly taken on since striking out on his own.

There’s a part of her that hurts for what she knows he must have gone through on his own, a feeling that’s replaced quickly by a hardened resolve. It had been _his_ decision to leave, she reminds herself, to take missions independent of her in hopes of proving himself in the eyes of those who still believed he could turn at a moment’s notice.

_You understand, Tash. You know how it is._

She did, and she had, and so she didn’t stop him when he walked out the door with a promise of coming back, a long kiss and a small silver chain pressed into the palm of her hand, because she had to believe that he _would_ come back.

“Are you okay?”

The shifting of sheets against her legs breaks her thoughts and she watches as he pushes himself up on his elbows, blinking sleep and confusion from his eyes, focusing on her still form.

“This was where I lived,” Natasha says quietly, and saying the words out loud sends a stab of something hot through her stomach. Clint sits up more fully.

“What?”

“I lived here. With my parents,” she repeats, suddenly annoyed that he’s apparently known the entire time and hasn’t even bothered to clue her in. “In Moscow. How did you even know this place was here?”

“You’re not the only one who knows how to dig up secrets,” Clint says slowly, watching her face. “Come on. You really thought that after all of our years together, I knew nothing about your past?” He reaches for the lamp beside the bed but Natasha reaches out at the same time, shoving his hand aside to keep the darkness at bay.

“My past is something _I_ don’t even know,” she replies as she lets her fingers trail along the bed and suddenly she’s not exactly sure how to reconcile Natasha Romanov with Natalia Romanova, the learned spy with a ledger of red and the girl who was never meant to be a weapon at all. “I was eight when they took me away. When my parents let them. _A better life_ ,” she intones hollowly, the words bitter on her tongue. “That’s what they said, because we were living on nothing and the government was telling us that they couldn’t give us what we needed, unless I provided for them.”

Clint shifts slightly, his eyes not leaving her face. “So you did.”

“No,” Natasha corrects a little too harshly. “I had already been providing for them. Factory jobs. Menial tasks. I had been doing grunt work as a child to help my family, but it wasn’t enough, so…that’s when they recruited me.” She pulls her legs up to her chest, still avoiding his gaze.

“I contacted them – my parents – I contacted them when I could. Told them I knew people who could move them to any country they wanted. But my dad, he would just tell me not to say such things over the phone.” She breaks off, forcing a laugh from her throat. “ _Don’t be stupid, Natalia. We didn’t teach you to be stupid_.” Natasha shakes her head. “My parents wanted the best for me.”

“Most parents do,” Clint returns, keeping his voice level, and Natasha moves her lips together in a thin line.

“When I joined up with S.H.I.E.L.D., I gave myself willingly. I put my trust in people who didn’t return it all the way,” she says softly, the ghost of Fury’s face a haze behind her pupils before she blinks it away into dust. “My parents were just trying to give me a better life, and in the end, it didn’t even matter.” She stops when she realizes that her hands are shaking, fingers picking at the bandage that covers her healing skin, caked spots of dried blood finding their way onto the covers.

“Why?” she asks in the silence when he doesn’t press her further, something inside her breaking apart, something that hurts more than a gunshot wound or an accidental blow to the stomach ever did.

“You need to remember who you are,” he says, still unmoving. “It starts here, Natasha. It starts at the place where it all began to unravel.”

 

______________________

 

She returns to bed after forcing her numbed body from his presence but doesn’t sleep for the rest of the night. Instead, she stays up, combing through the items she’s found in her room _– her room_ , the room she doesn’t quite remember.

There are things, though, that are somewhat familiar – the notches on the bedpost, the ones that first jogged her memory, because it felt good to be rebellious and because she wanted to brand something as her own. There’s the blanket that Clint had first offered her upon their arrival, now not just a blanket but a memory of warm hands, her mother wrapping her inside the soft folds after a nightmare that was so very tame compared to the nightmares she would have in her later years. She stays up until the first lights of dawn begin to bend and crinkle through the dusty windows, her brain trying to piece together the parts of her past that she decides she _wants_ to remember, and it’s only when she hears the creaking of the floorboards across the hall that she decides to move.

“You should really clean that up,” Clint says when he eventually makes his way downstairs and finds her sitting among the mess of the living room, surrounded by broken glass and torn out pages of thick books.

“I like the mess,” she says quietly without looking up, and when she moves her gaze she notices he’s holding a bag in his right hand. There’s another by his feet, the one from her room that she had previously unpacked, and she feels herself frown.

“I thought you said we weren’t leaving Russia.”

“We’re not,” Clint responds as he takes a sip of coffee, the white mug a constant she’s beginning to cling to in an otherwise confusing world. “Not yet, anyway. We’re taking a trip.”

“A trip.” Natasha raises an eyebrow. “You spent all this time getting me here, forcing me to remember what this place was, and now you want me to go somewhere else?”

“Yes,” Clint says, holding onto her eyes. “For a little while.”

She resists the urge to sit back on her hands, knowing that doing so will only result in injuring herself further among the destruction that she’s recently incited, before asking the question she hates and the one that she feels has been on her tongue for too many days now.

“Why do you want me to do this? Why do you want me to do _anything_?”

Clint puts down his bag, picking his way across the mess on the floor. “I wish it were that simple.”

“It could be,” she argues, shaking strands of blonde from her eyes as Clint regards her carefully.

“Do you trust me?”

Natasha tenses, eyeing the way he moves around the perimeter of the room. “I’m not sure,” she admits, feeling like she can’t be totally honest, like there’s a part of her she still needs to carefully guard because she’s not sure how badly she’s going to get burned. He sighs.

“Does that change anything?”

She calculates the choices in her head, weighing the options of an answer before she speaks. “No,” she says finally, getting up slowly, stepping over glass and trash and following him out the door.

 

______________________

 

This time, Natasha doesn’t ask where they’re going, partially because she knows it’s pointless, and they drive in silence while she drifts in and out of consciousness. It’s a fitful sleep more than anything because she doesn’t trust herself enough to entirely relax, but she hates to admit that he’s probably right about the fact that she hasn’t let her body rest while she’s been on the run, a combination of being too alert and too paranoid.

“How long has it been?” Clint asks quietly, as they turn off the main stretch of road onto a quieter, more desolate path.

“What do you mean?” Natasha asks hoarsely, shifting against the hard seat, legitimately unaware of what he’s trying to hint at even when he sighs as if she should know.

“Since you used the pills I found in your bag to help you sleep.”

She freezes. “Not as long as you,” she replies, choosing her words carefully and out of instinct, because for all she knows the year between them could’ve changed everything. The fact that he doesn’t refute says more than she knows his response ever could and it’s a memory she doesn’t like to think about: how they put him on medication after New York because they refused to let him back in the field otherwise.

“I stopped using them when S.H.I.E.L.D. fell,” Clint says after a long beat, steering the car even further off the road. “In Kastoria. When the guy on the other end of my comm, who was supposed to be on my six, almost took my head off and not by accident.” He pauses. “Withdrawal was a bitch without you around to help, but I haven’t found a reason yet to get back on that train.”

Natasha stays silent, her stomach twisting into knots, her eyes focusing on the way the landscape is passing too fast in front of her. “That doesn’t make it okay,” she says when she finds her voice because hell, she can’t help it, she’ll try and try not to but she’ll still _care_ , she’ll always care.

Clint barks out a laugh. “Please tell me when the fuck we have ever been _okay_.”

The response is caked in so much truth that Natasha can’t help but laugh back, though it’s a sound devoid of any kind of real emotion, another layer breaking off to expose more cracks underneath raw skin.

“You said I needed to come back here, to remember,” she says slowly, staring out the window again. “What exactly did you mean by that?”

“I guess we’ll see,” Clint says, slowing the car to a rolling stop. He rubs a hand over his stubble, gesturing to the window. “You gonna get out?”

Natasha shoots him a look but does as she’s told as Clint releases the locks on the door, allowing her to exit. Stretching her legs forward, she removes herself from the seat, standing up fully and glancing around.

“You really need to work on your accommodations,” she deadpans as she starts to observe the area, her hands on her hips, her mind simultaneously trying to get her bearings and also double check for anything that could compromise their security. “At least start showing off three star hotels if you can’t afford the ones with half a star.”

“This one isn’t exactly on the list of accommodations,” Clint replies quietly, and when she turns all the way to her left she feels as though the wind has been knocked out of her, as if someone has driven the air from her lungs and stolen coherent thoughts from her mind.

Wind and rain have damaged it, as they would any building that has been abandoned and run down and left to nature’s elements for a period of time. But Natasha thinks that the place could be burned to shit, nothing but a pile of rubble, and she would still know the cracks of the foundation, the rooms that held the people she had killed and tortured, the building where she had become unmade for the first time, and the last time, and then the first time all over again.

Dimly, she’s aware of Clint’s hand coming to rest on the small of her back, a touch that he’s denied himself up until this point and she flinches before drawing away. The smells of the atmosphere assault her sense and she remembers, _remembers_ how everything always seemed stagnant and dull and dense, the choking heaviness of death and fear that never really went away.

“Why would you do this?” she whispers, feeling violated, like he’s reached out and pulled back the folds of a band-aid on a wound not yet healed, something that’s still raw and red and bleeding, something that she hasn’t wanted to let him see.

“Why do you think?” he asks, and it’s enough, and she breaks, shoving him up against the car door with impressive force.

She pushes her mouth roughly against his, latching onto him with a need that feels almost savage, suddenly desperate to taste everything she can, the stale coffee on his teeth and the exhaustion on his face. She bites down hard on his lip, her teeth pulling at his skin as if she’s trying to ravage him, to tear him into the same pieces she feels herself breaking into because _how dare_ she crack and not him, this was about _them_ and goddammit she is not going to do this alone.

“Natasha,” Clint groans when he finally gets a breath, when she pulls away just enough to open her legs, grinding against his jeans where she can feel his erection. Her hands rip the jacket from his body, shoving the sleeves down his arms as her fingernails dig into his biceps and then into the back of his neck, her body aching with the need to feel, to touch, to _escape_ in a way that she’s been searching for since she left D.C.

“Natasha,” he says again, and his voice is there but not there, firm but far away as she thrusts against him, her movements desperate and uncontrolled, her hands pulling at the hem of his pants.

“ _Natasha_.”

And then Clint is using whatever leverage he’s gained to push her back from the car. She stumbles sideways, shaken, only vaguely aware of the way she can see his cock aching for release against his pants before she curls in on herself, the ground coming up to meet her knees in a rush she’s not prepared for.

“Natasha,” he says firmly, dropping next to her. One hand finds its place on her back, cautious and comfortable, and the repetition of her name is like an anchor that he’s trying to force her to grab onto. _Remember who you are_. _Natasha_.

Hot tears mingle with the taste of his tongue as she shoves him back against the ground and this time, she doesn’t bother to try to remove his pants, just tugs them down enough so that she can get her hand inside and grab his cock tightly. Natasha feels him shudder, notes the hitch in her own breath at the way his quickens, and it reminds her of the time that she fucked him in Cantabria, on the dirty floor of a forest where they both thought they would die before extraction came so really, why the hell not? They were both on their last legs, literally, bullets gone awry and arrows depleted and his shoulder bleeding out, and so of course it made the most sense for them to attempt to kill themselves with one last moment of vicious passion. Natasha is no stranger to the looming cloud of death that she knows hangs over her head when she wakes up or when she walks down the street, it’s a price she never considered _not_ paying because it was what she had promised herself to so long ago.

“You don’t want this now,” he says quietly, a soft plea, and it’s a sensation of not being in control of her own body, where she wants him but doesn’t at the same time. _I just need to feel_ she thinks before letting him go, falling back on the ground, damp with his scent and sweat and tears.

_I just need something real._

 

______________________

 

She lets him help her into the building once he’s redressed himself properly, lowering her to the floor and handing over their old sweatshirt, as well as a pair of loose fitting track pants and some undergarments.

“Here,” he says quietly, turning away as she dresses slowly, shaking fingers trying to make a knot on the drawstring of the pants before she gives up completely, sinking onto the floor.

“Lie down,” Clint says quietly, his voice a ghost in the shadows. She furrows her brow but obeys for a reason that she doesn’t quite understand, stretching out and turning onto her side. She’s not sure what she expects but somehow knows that it’s not going to be his body next to hers and sure enough, as soon as she curls back in on herself, he’s moved to the other side so that he’s crouched in front of her, a safe distance from her touch.

“You ready to talk?” he asks, sitting back on his heels. Natasha blinks once in the darkness, unmoving.

“You brought me back.”

“Yes,” Clint says quietly, and she wonders if there’s no light because of the fact that building is abandoned, or because talking in the dark is a crutch they both use more than they would ever admit to. “Are you surprised?”

“Yes,” she repeats quietly, before stopping, realizing that her words aren’t entirely true. “No. I don’t know, Clint.”

He stays silent, watching her through still, bright eyes, before removing a thin folder from inside the flap of his jacket. Flipping it open, he begins to read.

“In 1991, Natasha Romanov was brought to the Red Room,” Clint says, his voice a quiet drone. “Her name then was Natalia Romanova. She was trained to serve her country, because she was told that in order to provide, she had to give back. What she didn’t know was that the people she was being trained with were working under a different mission all together.” He looks up, gauging the look on her face, the way the lines around her eyes crease before continuing.

“Several years later, Clint Barton was dispatched to Russia. He was told he needed to take down a covert operation in Moscow and he was supposed to break the barrier, get people out with the help of a team. But they were smarter.” He nods to no one in particular. “Knew who was coming. Most girls had been already shipped off before he got there, except for one. She hid herself away, and fought to kill when he found her. She almost did.”

“She gave him a two inch permanent scar on his leg, after she cut through his clothes, because she had to protect herself against what she knew he was supposed to do,” Natasha adds quietly, her eyes finding the wall she remembers shoving his body against, before she plunged her knife deep into his flesh with a feeling she can only remember as satisfaction.

“But he made a different call,” he finishes, flipping the folder closed. “Took her awhile to come around to the whole S.H.I.E.L.D. thing, but I think she did okay.” He tosses it across the floor, as the words leave his lips, and Natasha lets it come to a stop at her feet, closing her eyes.

“She wasn’t a good person,” Natasha whispers, as if saying the act of saying the words out loud is something that terrifies her. “She was never a good person. Not from the time she was taken, and not now.”

“But she _was_ a person,” Clint counters, folding his arms. “Wasn’t she?”

Natasha moves her lips in the absence of sound and feels the tears start at the corner of her eyes. In some sense, she can almost feel herself breaking, the pieces starting to come apart as she struggles to hold them together with glue that just doesn’t want to stay anymore.

“I’m not a good person,” she repeats, opening her eyes, pushing herself back together as much as she can despite the cracks that she knows are irreparable. “I’ve been remade so many times that I don’t even know who I am anymore, except…I’m someone that always owes a debt. I’m a weapon.” She pauses. “Every choice I’ve ever made was based on a lie.”

“Is that what you think?” There’s a look in his eye that she thinks might be hurt, but she can’t allow herself to think about it in the face of everything else her brain is fighting against.

“How can I think anything else?” She presses her face into the floor. “I spent my whole life trying to get by just to survive, because survival was important to me. And not just survival, but making sure the _right_ people survived.” She stops, her voice breaking slightly.

“And?” he prompts quietly.

“And I never asked myself what kind of life I was preserving, not until S.H.I.E.L.D.,” she finishes. “I tried to make things worth it. I tried to repay people for my debts, but that didn’t work, either. Turns out that it didn’t matter in the end.”

Clint doesn’t respond, and when he speaks again, she almost has to strain to hear him.

“Who do you want to be?”

A question that once would have been easy for her to answer now sticks in her throat, robbing her of breath. _I want to be yours. I don’t need to be anyone else._ She swallows it down, feeling it land like a dull weight inside her stomach.

“I don’t know.”

He looks at her a little sadly, his eyes moving across her body, and shakes his head.

“Then I can’t help you.”

 

______________________

 

What Natasha remembers most about the Red Room are the girls.

Not the sessions and not the training – those are their own memories, hard and intense and they make her sick when she think about them in detail. She remembers the girls, the ones that just like her were recruited from lower class families, the ones that were promised safety and loyalty if they only did this _one_ thing, became this _one_ person, obeyed this _one_ order. She remembers the girls because every so often they disappeared, taken and then returned with fewer emotions and with more resilience.

They left children, but they came back killers.

Natasha barely slept, because she never could, because the ones who slept were the ones who died, the ones who ended up with knives in their stomach and garrotes around their throats. Her most prized possessions were the knife she kept a constant hold of in her left hand, and the small piece of wire hidden under her pillow.

(The day they were to come for her, to unmake her for a second, third, fourth time, that was when Clint decided to storm the compound and she remembers that, too, the man with the bow who entered the building as she ducked into one of the smaller rooms with her weapons, hiding behind her own fear.)

She blinks awake slowly, only realizing her internal panic when her heart slows to something of a normal speed. She picks herself off the floor after doing a quick sweep of the premise, finding it bare and still except for her own shadow, and then she moves through the room against her will. He’s not hard to spot when she gets outside, standing besides the car with two hands stuck inside his jacket pockets, and she approaches cautiously even though she knows he has to be able to hear her arrival.

“Enjoying the view?” she asks quietly, watching his shoulders move from behind.

“I didn’t expect you to sleep,” he replies and she leans against the car, noticing his stance is far too stiff.

“Me neither.” She runs a hand through her hair, wrapping her arms tighter around her body before speaking again.

“Why haven’t you touched me?”

Clint startles at that, frowning as he turns around. “Who do you think has been taking care of you?”

“No.” Natasha shakes her head, trying not to let his words affect her. “You may have touched me, but you haven’t come close to me. Not the way you used to.” She watches his face as she talks, the way he tries to hide his emotions underneath years of a careful mask that he’s never quite mastered complete control of in the same way that she has.

“I need to keep my distance,” he says warily, and now it’s her turn to frown.

“Why?”

“Because.” Clint pauses. “I need to make sure that you’re okay with me.”

“Why on earth would I –” The words catch in her throat as Clint raises an eyebrow and gestures to the barren land around them.

“Everything in your life is a lie, right?” he asks quietly, and she shakes her head, exhaling loudly.

“That wasn’t what I meant.”

“Except it was.”

“It wasn’t!” Her temper is flaring now, and it takes all her effort not to push him up against the car again, only this time she can’t decide if she would just fuck him or punch him until he couldn’t move anymore. He seems to sense the process of her thoughts, folding his arms tightly over his chest as if it’s his own mode of self-defense.

“I took you from here. I promised you a better life and instead, I just contributed to your lie.” He laughs softly, looking down. “What a fucking joke.”

Natasha sighs. “You didn’t know,” she says, resisting the urge to curl her fingers around his arm in comfort. “You did the same thing to yourself.”

“I willingly came to S.H.I.E.L.D. because I didn’t have a choice, because I would have been abandoned on the side of the road if they hadn’t brought me in,” Clint returns hotly. “This was my path, but it didn’t have to be yours. I was supposed to protect you. And I failed.”

“You didn’t fail,” she returns in a frustrated tone, knowing it’s not enough but also feeling like she doesn’t know what to say because maybe they’ve reached a point where the damage is too much for either of them to work through, and maybe they should just continue to pretend that things are okay when they’re really not. “You’re still trying to help me, right? Doesn’t that count?”

Clint doesn’t answer, arching his neck towards the sky, and she thinks she can just barely see the thin tracks of tears that draw a straight line down the length of his cheeks.

“When you figure out who you want to be, then I can protect you,” he says, pushing past her. “Until then, you’re on your own.”

 

______________________

 

The ride back to the house is filled with uncomfortable silence and something else that Natasha can’t quite put her finger on, a lingering cloud of uncertainty and anxiety that she senses comes with the territory of both of them starting to become stripped in ways they haven’t been prepared for. It’s altogether a curious experiment, because there’s always one of them who’s more whole, a grounding force that guides one in the absence of the other being compromised or unwell. Now, it’s mostly him, but she doesn’t miss the fissures underneath his own armor, the things he’s trying to hold back that put him dangerously close to the edge of the same crater she knows he’s trying to steer her back from. It’s part of the reason why she doesn’t bother to help him with the bags from the car as she gets out, instead making her way down the dirt path that leads into a set of small withered tree stumps. It’s also part of the reason behind a sudden feeling of needing to get away, at least in some capacity, because the house feels too intimate and she’s not quite sure she can be back inside without breaking down.

“I used to come out here by myself all the time,” she says when she hears him sit down next to her, close enough to be a comfort but not quite close enough to be relaxed. “When I was confused about everything that I wanted to be. You think about who you want to be as a child, you know? Make choices. Choose your loyalties.” She looks up at the sky, the whispers of clouds peeking through the afternoon sun. “I was told I could choose to be whatever I wanted, but I never knew what that was. This was the only place where I felt like I could be myself and now…I don’t even know who I am.”

“No,” Clint agrees, eyeing her hair, and she ignores the look she knows he’s giving her. “You don’t. You’re not the Natasha Romanov that was taken from her parents, and you’re not the one that I met in Moscow. But you’re also not the Natasha Romanov who has had my back for the past ten years.”

“The truth is a matter of circumstance,” she replies evenly, repeating the words she first heard from his mouth when they were alone for the first time, when he gave her a knife and a choice and asked him to pick between him and the past that haunted her, giving her _permission_ if she wanted to cut open his jugular without any pretense.

_So tell me, Natasha. Who do you want to be?_

The expression on his face doesn’t change, she notices, just darkens slightly. “So what?” he asks, matching her tone. Natasha sighs.

“I’ve been so many things to so many people that I’ve never let anyone see the real me.”

“Not entirely true,” Clint replies softly, and Natasha feels herself shudder.

“True enough.”

“Then why are you still wearing it?” he counters, his eyes resting on her collarbone, and she knows he doesn’t miss the way she swallows down a sudden rush of emotion.

“Because I needed to be reminded of what was real,” she admits, running her finger underneath the chain. Clint nods.

“But real is not here,” he pushes, as if he’s trying to get her to say what she doesn’t want to, his eyes moving around the landscape. Natasha shakes her head slowly, and sighs.

“Real _was_ here. But it’s not anymore.”

 

______________________

 

Over dinner, he tells her that they’re leaving Russia in the morning.

Before the sun comes up, she spends the night rearranging everything in her bedroom, a mirror of the way she remembered things at the beginning and the way she wants it all to end.

 

______________________

 

Getting out of Russia without documentation, it turns out, is easier than Natasha thinks it will be. Clint’s paid off a few border guards with the last of the weaponry that he’s pilfered from what he didn’t realize would be his final mission, which he reveals he’s been storing in the basement. He’s stashed his arrows there, too, along with the knives that he’d taken from her when she first arrived, and as he repacks and restocks his quiver she notices the way his hands shaking more than usual. Instinctively, she knows he probably wouldn’t be able to aim properly at this particular moment, much less take a shot he could probably do in his sleep, and she tries not to let herself think about it.

 _We’ve both been compromised_ , she thinks grimly, as they drive in silence to the airport.

There’s a small plane parked at the edge of the airfield in St. Petersburg, and he ushers her onto it in silence. He won’t elaborate on the details though he doesn’t have to, because there’s only one person who would be able to push a private jet through otherwise watchful channels when their entire security network was shot to shit, and it’s the same person whose plane would include two wide seats and a full bar, along with a corner bed and a small kitchen.

Natasha doesn’t speak as she moves towards the bed, immediately twisting onto her side and closing her eyes. She opens them again when she feels movement beneath her, the jet lifting off, her eyes finding the window and the expanse of sky that becomes brighter and bluer and the rocky terrain of her homeland a dotted haze below, its presence fading from sight the same way she feels it fading from her memory. Clint comes to sit beside her after far too long and she doesn’t let herself question why he wants to sit upright on a bed when there are two particularly comfortable chairs at his disposal.

Somewhere over the ocean, when there’s nothing underneath them except clouds and fog and maybe one small pocket of land, she falls fully asleep, her fingers tight around his palm.

 

______________________

 

They land in a private airspace outside of a small Long Island town in the early morning, when it’s light enough to see but dark enough that they can slip away undetected. Natasha guesses it must be closer to five than seven when she wakes, her entire body thrown off course and disoriented by the ride, the dreams that her mind hasn’t let her forget and the whirlwind days of being on the road and on the run.

Clint finds the car left for them a few yards away, parked under a small swell of trees that hide it from view and _of course_ Stark would’ve outfitted them with the most obscene vehicle possible even though Clint swears he’s requested something that won’t cause attention.

“When I feel like seeing the human race again, remind me to kill him,” Natasha mutters as she opens the door, while Clint slides into the driver’s seat and flicks on the headlights, pulling out of the clearing and starting them on the path towards Manhattan.

 

______________________

 

She hasn’t been back in the States since she first left her apartment, and seeing the cityscape rise out of the distance as dawn bleeds through the sky is a sight that’s both comforting and unnerving. It’s been four years since New York and the city is still rebuilding, has done a decent enough job of moving forward in the wake of the tragedy but there are still holes in the skyline, ones that Natasha knows wouldn’t be visible to anyone else but the absence of buildings which she recognizes all too acutely.

Clint navigates the car through the tolls and tunnels, through the winding streets and start-stops of traffic, until they’re well into downtown and in an area she’s starting to recognize as more than just a street here or a store there. He pulls up in front of a large building, its brick exterior showing signs of the same kind of age she’s starting to feel in her limbs as she drags herself out of the car.

“Last stop,” he says quietly as he exits the driver’s seat, and she doesn’t ask what he means as she stares up at the building before slowly climbing the front stairs.

“When was the last time you were here?”

Natasha puts her tongue in her cheek, wondering if the question is a trick. “After New York,” she says, deciding that it’s the most correct answer, and the one that he has to be looking for. “It was the first place I took you after Loki.”

“It was the first place we were alone together,” he corrects, gesturing at her hands. “You wanna open the door?”

She looks at him, confused, and he rubs a hand across eyes that look far too tired to be functional.

“Open the door, Natasha.”

She takes a breath, shaking hands clutching the key that she knows like the back of her hand, the one she’s used far too many times over the years. It’s dark and damp when she walks inside, the blinds drawn tight, a thin layer of dust coating most of the furniture and she’s pretty sure there’s probably molding food in the fridge as well, if there’s even any food at all.

“Well.” Clint looks around as he follows her in, dropping his bag on the floor. “For once, I can’t be blamed for having the messier living space.”

Natasha smiles wryly. “You always did know how to mess things up just enough,” she says, running her fingers along the back of the chair, and Clint shrugs.

“Comes with the territory.”

She falls into silence while she looks around the room, at the table, at the fridge, at anywhere but him, and Clint edges his head down, finding her eyes.

“What are you thinking of?” he asks, and she hesitates before speaking.

“It’s my home.” She bites her lip. “But for some reason, it doesn’t feel like it.”

She waits for him to respond and is surprised when he doesn’t, instead moving silently to the bedroom and leaving her by herself in the middle of the kitchen. Natasha sinks into an empty chair as he disappears, her head encased in her hands, two fingers pressed into the side of her skull.

She lets herself sit alone in the quiet for a comfortable stretch of time before getting up slowly, walking to bedroom and finding it empty with the adjoining bathroom door tightly closed. She puts her own bag on the floor by the dresser and then stands outside the door, counting to five in her head, before turning the knob slowly.

Clint is standing with his back to her when she walks in, hunched over the sink with his shoulders in a slouch. He’s got his shirt off and his jeans loosely unbuttoned, in the light of the bathroom she can see how ragged his body has become, how it sags in places he normally would never allow anyone to see. His hair is longer than she’s realized, still shorter in front but beginning to crawl down the base of his neck in the back, and she can’t help but notice the fading scars across his spine, the ones that she’s absolutely sure weren’t there when he left her.

“You should go sleep,” he says raggedly, shifting until he can see her standing behind him. “It was a long flight.”

“I’m not tired,” she replies, which is only half the truth. She steps closer as he stays frozen, unmoving but not shying away from her advance as she presses her body against his, her lips finding his skin, and she kisses up the length of his neck until she reaches his mouth.

“The apartment doesn’t feel like my home,” she breathes as she pulls him in. “But this does.” She wraps her arms around his waist, her fingers digging into his back and Clint whimpers slightly as she traces her tongue over his teeth.

“I can’t do this if you still don’t know who you are,” he says feebly, a weak form of protest, his breath hot and burning. Natasha shrugs, pulling back to find his eyes.

“I know,” she says simply, leaning forward again, hoping he’ll understand what she doesn’t say, because they’ve always been better at explaining themselves this way rather than with extensive, drawn out conversations. While Natasha knows that sometimes there’s no way around it, the truth is that more often than not it’s easier to throw a punch to his face than talk about what she needs to express and right now she knows that she needs this, that she needs _him_. She still doesn’t know who she is, but she does know that some part of him exists in her, and that she needs to unlock it and find it while he’s let his guard down enough to be vulnerable.

Clint returns the kiss and she loses herself in the way his hands move over her skin, the way his breathing quickens and the way his chest rises and falls against her own. He fumbles for her shirt, lifting it over her shoulders as his lips find her collarbone, and he pushes down her bra straps while putting his mouth against the silver chain of the arrow necklace. He sucks lightly at her skin, first gently and then with more vigor, until the pallor turns a deep red underneath, until Natasha moans in pain and he pulls away, kissing a line down her chest instead.

She closes her lips around the lobe of his ear in retaliation, her tongue flicking against the spot that she knows – remembers – gets him more than anything else. Sure enough, she feels him sway slightly, caught off guard by her action, and she pushes him back against the sink.

“Need help?” she whispers into his ear, her hands moving down his back to push his jeans down until she can fully cup his ass. He chuckles, a throaty laugh disguised with a whimper that vibrates off her breastbone and almost makes her come on impact.

“I need you.”

He sucks gently at her nipple as his hands work to remove her pants while hers do the same, until both of them are finally naked. Free of hindering garments, she wraps her legs around him.

“Bed,” he manages as she starts to move against him, her face flush with something that she hasn’t felt in far too long. She pulls him sharply from the bathroom and into the bedroom, shoving him down on the mattress before taking him in her mouth without warning and without explanation. She feels him arch up in response, a sharp noise of want escaping from his lips as he clutches the bed sheets with his fingers.

“Natasha,” he groans out, and she stops moving for a small moment.

“That’s who I am,” she mumbles, her voice a quiet vibration against his cock, and he shudders again.

“That’s who you are,” he manages to repeat as she increases her speed, rolling his head back again. “Natasha.”

She slides off him abruptly, rolling him over. “Show me,” she instructs, her voice soft as she tries to control her own breathing, because she _needs_ this. “Show me who I am.”

She follows him with her eyes as he moves to part her legs, his tongue coming out to taste her. It feels good, and she’s forgotten just _how_ good, and it’s not just the fact that it’s been far too long since she’s had this kind of contact with him. It’s the fact that together they’ve always been more of a whole than anything else, and while she can try to deny it, she also knows that it would be futile to pretend otherwise.

He pulls away and presses two fingers where his mouth has been, massaging her clit in a way that’s so familiar it hurts, and she thinks that even with the year that has passed between them, with the fact that they’ve both tried to pretend that their real selves don’t exist, _this_ is what they always know and come back to – the familiarity of knowing how to touch each other and knowing how to make each other feel in ways that they otherwise can’t express.

“Fuck me,” she whispers, her voice hoarse, and she’s not sure if he can even hear her but he moves anyway, shifting on top of her again so he can slide in.

He fits the way he always has, like a piece of a puzzle that has been missing without her even noticing that she’s needed it to feel complete. She grabs onto his shoulders, digging her nails into his skin, only vaguely aware of the wetness of blood on her fingers and the coppery taste of it in her mouth where her lips have found his. They move in tandem, back and forth, while she concentrates on holding herself back just enough so that she can let herself savor this feeling of him, a part of her wishing that they could stop time so she could stay like this forever, locked in this moment where they both just _fit_ , where she feels safe and warm and whole all at once.

She feels the exact moment when he comes, his orgasm mixed with a string of expletives she’s only ever heard him use when he’s been in a kind of trouble that’s required extraction. She waits until he’s tight inside her to let herself go in response, unintelligible Russian spilling from her own lips, a fusing of emotions and a cry of everything they haven’t found the words to say.

Natasha finds the overgrown strands of hair at base of his neck as he lowers his head to her chest, closing her eyes as she tries to align the beats of their breath in the aftermath of their orgasms. _It’s better like this_ , she thinks, feeling grateful that they don’t expect each other to speak, that they can wait to find the words that probably should be said but that they don’t know how to start. He rolls off of her after what seems like eternity but doesn’t go far, instead curling into her side and letting one hand brush damp strands of blonde from her now open eyes.

“Is that what you needed?” he asks, and she can tell he’s still trying to equalize his breathing. When she nods, he nods back, as if bridging the understanding between them for the first time.

“It’s not a fix, you know,” he says after another long spell of silence, and this time, he doesn’t sound quite so out of breath when he speaks. “It’s not a cure.”

“I know,” she says quietly, turning into her pillow, feeling like maybe she can admit that now. “Nothing is.” She reaches out to find his hand, tangling their fingers together tightly, as if she’s afraid that letting go will cause her to fall back into the abyss she’s spent far too long sitting at the bottom of. “I feel like I don’t exist.”

“Do you not?” he returns, his voice both confused and sad, and everything about the moment suddenly feels raw and open and honest, as if she’s trying to feed him a piece of her soul, one of the many fragments of it that are just starting to grow back.

“I feel like I died,” she says, her voice barely above a whisper. “I feel like I died, and now I’m a ghost.”

“Like a shell,” Clint says quietly, and in his voice there’s a shared connection of loss, of brokenness. Natasha nods, bringing her legs closer and wrapping them around his, until they’re two question marks fused into a period, a closed circle of pain and recovery.

“Like a shell,” she repeats as Clint raises his arm, thumbing her face.

“You exist to me.”

“Do I?” Natasha looks up, her eyes bright, and he nods.

“Yes,” he whispers, closing his mouth over hers, a seal and a declaration and a promise all at once.

 

______________________

 

“Burn them,” she says as she looks down at the collection of passports two days later, freshly dyed red strands hanging in front of her face, loose and curly, the way she knows he remembers from the first day they met. Clint frowns, looking up from the paper she’s quite sure he’s only been pretending to read so he can keep himself occupied while she studies the documents in front of her.

“Excuse me?”

“Burn them,” Natasha repeats shaking back her hair, her voice a little stronger. “We start over, and we start new. That was the whole point of all this, right?”

Clint nods slowly, putting down the paper and getting up. “Yes. But I need you to be sure that this is what you want.”

Natasha sighs, spreading her hands along the table in an imitation of the formation that she’s seen from him more times than she can count, slim fingers spread tightly across the length of the table.

“They wanted to put me in jail, you know.”

“Yeah, well. If they want to do that, they’ll have to go through me, first,” Clint says, placing his hands on her shoulder. “And they should know by now that I don’t go down without a fight.”

“It’s not that simple,” she replies sadly, a modicum of regret behind her tone. “They’ll never stop looking, no matter where I go, or how many times I change my hair. I put myself out there, Clint. I made the sacrifice, but in doing so, I only made myself more of a target.”

“I know,” he says quietly, thumbing the red at the base of her neck, still bruised from where he’s sucked it dry, the silver arrow a shining band aid against her skin. “So you tell me, Natasha. You tell me what you want.”

 

______________________

 

Four days later, she sits on the roof of her apartment and strings his bow while he wields her knife and it’s the first step to coming back, the fact that they can handle each other’s weapons with the same comfortable ease that they know they can handle each other’s bodies, a trusting of touch for the inanimate objects that are so much a part of who they are.

Two weeks later, she sits on the edge of the toilet seat while he drags a pair of scissors through her hair, steady hands using sharp blades to cut into familiar red strands until enough of it pools around her feet like a blood, a sacrifice and a ritual that she needs to undergo in order to reclaim normalcy.

She spends her days remembering what she can piece together about the past that she was so desperate to run from, and he spends his days trading stories that he’s never told, the 365 days that she’s missed out on becoming their own story, the words filling a part of her that before had been so empty. They spend their nights talking with their bodies rather than using words, and each time they come inside of each other she feels herself become a little more human and a little less plastic, hopes that she’s helping him to feel the same.

It is healing. It is understanding. It is love. It is what Natasha realizes when his fingers curl around her palm, a wordless promise for another nightmare tampered, another fear assuaged, another worry dispelled.

They don’t talk about what they know is the truth, that he may have rescued her from running away and that she may have rescued him from guilt, but that neither of them are fixed. They both know that it will be a long time before they can walk down the street or drive a car without looking over their shoulder, without wondering if the world will crumble at their feet without warning. But there’s a light at the end of the tunnel that’s brighter than it’s ever been, and a hope that is rekindling itself in their bodies, and they are pushing forward like they always have, one foot in front of the other, together and apart and then together again.

They are pushing forward together, because rebuilding a life is something that is easier when you're not alone.

**Author's Note:**

> What started as an offshoot of a previous post Winter Soldier fic quickly turned into something more, and something that I've been fixated on since the movie came out - specifically, Natasha's face after Pierce asked "are you ready for the world to see you for who you really are?" Much has been written about Natasha and Clint helping each other find their way back, but in the wake of Natasha literally stripping herself of everything that made her the person she was comfortable existing as, I wanted to strip her down even further and take her through the process of rebuilding herself - with help, of course.
> 
> This is that story, and for however frustrating it was to make it come together in a way that worked, I'm grateful I had the opportunity to write it.


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